Opis ebooka David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

David Copperfield is the novel that draws most closely from Charles Dickens's own life. Its eponymous hero, orphaned as a boy, grows up to discover love and happiness, heartbreak and sorrow amid a cast of eccentrics, innocents, and villains. Praising Dickens's power of invention, Somerset Maugham wrote: "There were never such people as the Micawbers, Peggotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep and his mother. They are fantastic inventions of Dickens's exultant imagination...you can never quite forget them."

Charles John Huffam Dickens pen-name "Boz", was the foremost
English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social
campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest
writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable
characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his
lifetime. Later critics, beginning with George Gissing and G. K.
Chesterton, championed his mastery of prose, his endless invention
of memorable characters and his powerful social sensibilities. Yet
he has also received criticism from writers such as George Henry
Lewes, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, who list sentimentality,
implausible occurrence and grotesque characters as faults in his
oeuvre. The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has
meant that none have ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote
serialised novels, which was the usual format for fiction at the
time, and each new part of his stories would be eagerly anticipated
by the reading public. Source: Wikipedia

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Preface to 1850 edition

I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this
Book, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it
with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require.
My interest in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so
divided between pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement
of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions -
that I am in danger of wearying the reader whom I love, with
personal confidences, and private emotions.

Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any
purpose, I have endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’
imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing
some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the
creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I have
nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which
might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this
Narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the
writing.

Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward. I
cannot close this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a
hopeful glance towards the time when I shall again put forth my two
green leaves once a month, and with a faithful remembrance of the
genial sun and showers that have fallen on these leaves of David
Copperfield, and made me happy.

London, October, 1850.

Preface to the Charles Dickens
edition

I remarked in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not
find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first
sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure
which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest in it
was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided between
pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long design,
regret in the separation from many companions - that I was in
danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private
emotions.

Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any
purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’
imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing
some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the
creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I had
nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which
might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe this
Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the
writing.

So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now
only take the reader into one confidence more. Of all my books, I
like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond
parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love
that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents,
I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is
David Copperfield.

1869

Chapter1 I
Am Born

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or
whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must
show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that
I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at
twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to
strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was
declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood
who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there
was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first,
that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was
privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably
attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either
gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can
show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or
falsified by the result. On the second branch of the question, I
will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my
inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet.
But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this
property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of
it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.

I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the
newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going
people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith
and preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; all I know is, that there
was but one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney
connected with the bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in
cash, and the balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from
drowning on any higher bargain. Consequently the advertisement was
withdrawn at a dead loss - for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s
own sherry was in the market then - and ten years afterwards, the
caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to
fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five
shillings. I was present myself, and I remember to have felt quite
uncomfortable and confused, at a part of myself being disposed of
in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a
hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated
five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short - as
it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to
endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact which
will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was
never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have
understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she
never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and
that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the
last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and
others, who had the presumption to go ‘meandering’ about the world.
It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea
perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She
always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive
knowledge of the strength of her objection, ‘Let us have no
meandering.’

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my
birth.

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as they
say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had
closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on
it. There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection
that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy
remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his
white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable
compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark
night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and
candle, and the doors of our house were - almost cruelly, it seemed
to me sometimes - bolted and locked against it.

An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of mine,
of whom I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal
magnate of our family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor
mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread
of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was
seldom), had been married to a husband younger than herself, who
was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage,
‘handsome is, that handsome does’ - for he was strongly suspected
of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a
disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined
arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs’ window.
These evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey
to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went
to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in
our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with
a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo - or a Begum.
Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten
years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon
the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in
a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there
as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live
secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.

My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she
was mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my
mother was ‘a wax doll’. She had never seen my mother, but she knew
her to be not yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met
again. He was double my mother’s age when he married, and of but a
delicate constitution. He died a year afterwards, and, as I have
said, six months before I came into the world.

This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may
be excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can
make no claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters
stood; or to have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my
own senses, of what follows.

My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and
very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and
desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little
stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of prophetic
pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at all excited on the
subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting by the fire,
that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and very
doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her,
when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite,
she saw a strange lady coming up the garden.

My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it
was Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady,
over the garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a
fell rigidity of figure and composure of countenance that could
have belonged to nobody else.

When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her
identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted
herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing
the bell, she came and looked in at that identical window, pressing
the end of her nose against the glass to that extent, that my poor
dear mother used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a
moment.

She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been
convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a
Friday.

My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind
it in the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and
inquiringly, began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like
a Saracen’s Head in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother.
Then she made a frown and a gesture to my mother, like one who was
accustomed to be obeyed, to come and open the door. My mother
went.

‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the
emphasis referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, and her
condition.

‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.

‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I
dare say?’

My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a
disagreeable consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had
been an overpowering pleasure.

‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her head,
and begged her to walk in.

They went into the parlour my mother had come from, the fire in
the best room on the other side of the passage not being lighted -
not having been lighted, indeed, since my father’s funeral; and
when they were both seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my
mother, after vainly trying to restrain herself, began to cry. ‘Oh
tut, tut, tut!’ said Miss Betsey, in a hurry. ‘Don’t do that! Come,
come!’

My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried until
she had had her cry out.

‘Take off your cap, child,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and let me see
you.’

My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with
this odd request, if she had any disposition to do so. Therefore
she did as she was told, and did it with such nervous hands that
her hair (which was luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her
face.

‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a very
Baby!’

My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even
for her years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor
thing, and said, sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a
childish widow, and would be but a childish mother if she lived. In
a short pause which ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss
Betsey touch her hair, and that with no ungentle hand; but, looking
at her, in her timid hope, she found that lady sitting with the
skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands folded on one knee, and her
feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.

‘In the name of Heaven,’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, ‘why
Rookery?’

‘Do you mean the house, ma’am?’ asked my mother.

‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Cookery would have been more
to the purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either
of you.’

‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’ returned my mother.
‘When he bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks
about it.’

The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some
tall old elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my
mother nor Miss Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms
bent to one another, like giants who were whispering secrets, and
after a few seconds of such repose, fell into a violent flurry,
tossing their wild arms about, as if their late confidences were
really too wicked for their peace of mind, some weatherbeaten
ragged old rooks’-nests, burdening their higher branches, swung
like wrecks upon a stormy sea.

‘Where are the birds?’ asked Miss Betsey.

‘The -?’ My mother had been thinking of something else.

‘The rooks - what has become of them?’ asked Miss Betsey.

‘There have not been any since we have lived here,’ said my
mother. ‘We thought - Mr. Copperfield thought - it was quite a
large rookery; but the nests were very old ones, and the birds have
deserted them a long while.’

‘David Copperfield all over!’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘David
Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s
not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, because he sees
the nests!’

‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned my mother, ‘is dead, and if you dare
to speak unkindly of him to me -’

My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of
committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily
have settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far
better training for such an encounter than she was that evening.
But it passed with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat
down again very meekly, and fainted.

When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her,
whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window. The
twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as
they saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid
of the fire.

‘Well?’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she
had only been taking a casual look at the prospect; ‘and when do
you expect -’

‘Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?’
cried my mother in a helpless manner.

‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy.
What do you call your girl?’

‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my
mother innocently.

‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting
the second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs, but
applying it to my mother instead of me, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean
your servant-girl.’

‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.

‘Peggotty!’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. ‘Do you
mean to say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian
church, and got herself named Peggotty?’ ‘It’s her surname,’ said
my mother, faintly. ‘Mr. Copperfield called her by it, because her
Christian name was the same as mine.’

Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she
had been a recognized authority in the house ever since it had been
a house, and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty
coming along the passage with a candle at the sound of a strange
voice, Miss Betsey shut the door again, and sat down as before:
with her feet on the fender, the skirt of her dress tucked up, and
her hands folded on one knee.

‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I
have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must
be a girl. Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl
-’

‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.

‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’
returned Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t contradict. From the moment of this
girl’s birth, child, I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her
godmother, and I beg you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield.
There must be no mistakes in life with this Betsey Trotwood. There
must be no trifling with her affections, poor dear. She must be
well brought up, and well guarded from reposing any foolish
confidences where they are not deserved. I must make that my
care.’

There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of these
sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and
she repressed any plainer reference to them by strong constraint.
So my mother suspected, at least, as she observed her by the low
glimmer of the fire: too much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in
herself, and too subdued and bewildered altogether, to observe
anything very clearly, or to know what to say.

‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when she
had been silent for a little while, and these motions of her head
had gradually ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’

‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield was only
too good to me.’

‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.

‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough
world again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my mother.

‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally
matched, child - if any two people can be equally matched - and so
I asked the question. You were an orphan, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’

‘And a governess?’

‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came
to visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great
deal of notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at
last proposed to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married,’
said my mother simply.

‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent
upon the fire. ‘Do you know anything?’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.

‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.

‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could
wish. But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me -’

(’Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a
parenthesis.

- ‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to
learn, and he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of
his death’ - my mother broke down again here, and could get no
farther.

‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey.

-‘I kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it with
Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my mother in another burst of
distress, and breaking down again.

‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’

- ‘And I am sure we never had a word of difference respecting
it, except when Mr. Copperfield objected to my threes and fives
being too much like each other, or to my putting curly tails to my
sevens and nines,’ resumed my mother in another burst, and breaking
down again.

‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know that
will not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You
mustn’t do it!’

This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her
increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of
silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating
‘Ha!’ as she sat with her feet upon the fender.

‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I
know,’ said she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’

‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some
difficulty, ‘was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion
of a part of it to me.’

‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.

‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.

‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.

The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much
worse that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and
seeing at a glance how ill she was, - as Miss Betsey might have
done sooner if there had been light enough, - conveyed her upstairs
to her own room with all speed; and immediately dispatched Ham
Peggotty, her nephew, who had been for some days past secreted in
the house, unknown to my mother, as a special messenger in case of
emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.

Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they
arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady
of portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet
tied over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’ cotton.
Peggotty knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing
about her, she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of
her having a magazine of jewellers’ cotton in her pocket, and
sticking the article in her ears in that way, did not detract from
the solemnity of her presence.

The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having
satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this
unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for
some hours, laid himself out to be polite and social. He was the
meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out
of a room, to take up the less space. He walked as softly as the
Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side,
partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest
propitiation of everybody else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t
a word to throw at a dog. He couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad
dog. He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or a
fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as he walked; but he
wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have been quick
with him, for any earthly consideration.

Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on one
side, and making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the
jewellers’ cotton, as he softly touched his left ear:

‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’

‘What!’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like
a cork.

Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness - as he told my
mother afterwards - that it was a mercy he didn’t lose his presence
of mind. But he repeated sweetly:

‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’

‘Nonsense!’ replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one
blow.

Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her
feebly, as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called
upstairs again. After some quarter of an hour’s absence, he
returned.

‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest
to him.

‘Ba—a—ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the
contemptuous interjection. And corked herself as before.

Really - really - as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost
shocked; speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was
almost shocked. But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for
nearly two hours, as she sat looking at the fire, until he was
again called out. After another absence, he again returned.

‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side
again.

‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are - we are
progressing slowly, ma’am.’

‘Ya—a—ah!’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that Mr.
Chillip absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to
break his spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to go and sit
upon the stairs, in the dark and a strong draught, until he was
again sent for.

Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very
dragon at his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a
credible witness, reported next day, that happening to peep in at
the parlour-door an hour after this, he was instantly descried by
Miss Betsey, then walking to and fro in a state of agitation, and
pounced upon before he could make his escape. That there were now
occasional sounds of feet and voices overhead which he inferred the
cotton did not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently
being clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to expend her
superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest. That,
marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had
been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him,
rumpled his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if
she confounded them with her own, and otherwise tousled and
maltreated him. This was in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him
at half past twelve o’clock, soon after his release, and affirmed
that he was then as red as I was.

The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a
time, if at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was
at liberty, and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:

‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’

‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my
aunt’s manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little
smile, to mollify her.

It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt
didn’t shake him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She
only shook her own head at him, but in a way that made him
quail.

‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage,
‘I am happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma’am, and well
over.’

During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the
delivery of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.

‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet
still tied on one of them.

‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’
returned Mr. Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect a
young mother to be, under these melancholy domestic circumstances.
There cannot be any objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am.
It may do her good.’

‘And she. How is she?’ said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked
at my aunt like an amiable bird.

‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’

‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had known.
It’s a boy.’

My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings,
in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with
it, put it on bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished
like a discontented fairy; or like one of those supernatural
beings, whom it was popularly supposed I was entitled to see; and
never came back any more.

No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey
Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and
shadows, the tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled;
and the light upon the window of our room shone out upon the
earthly bourne of all such travellers, and the mound above the
ashes and the dust that once was he, without whom I had never
been.

Chapter2 I
Observe

The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as
I look far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with
her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at
all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole
neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that
I wondered the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples.

I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart,
dwarfed to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and
I going unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression
on my mind which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of
the touch of Peggotty’s forefinger as she used to hold it out to
me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket
nutmeg-grater.

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can
go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I
believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children
to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I
think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may
with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than
to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to
retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being
pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from
their childhood.

I might have a misgiving that I am ‘meandering’ in stopping to
say this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these
conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it
should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I
was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong
memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these
characteristics.

Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the
first objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a
confusion of things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I
remember? Let me see.

There comes out of the cloud, our house - not new to me, but
quite familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is
Peggotty’s kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house
on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-
kennel in a corner, without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that
look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing and
ferocious manner. There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow,
and seems to take particular notice of me as I look at him through
the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce. Of the
geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after me with their
long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at night: as a
man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.

Here is a long passage - what an enormous perspective I make of
it! - leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door. A dark
store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at
night; for I don’t know what may be among those tubs and jars and
old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning
light, letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is
the smell of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one
whiff. Then there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we sit
of an evening, my mother and I and Peggotty - for Peggotty is quite
our companion, when her work is done and we are alone - and the
best parlour where we sit on a Sunday; grandly, but not so
comfortably. There is something of a doleful air about that room to
me, for Peggotty has told me - I don’t know when, but apparently
ages ago - about my father’s funeral, and the company having their
black cloaks put on. One Sunday night my mother reads to Peggotty
and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the dead. And I am
so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me out of
bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window,
with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn
moon.

There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the
grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees;
nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding
there, when I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a
closet within my mother’s room, to look out at it; and I see the
red light shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the
sun-dial glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again?’

Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a
window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and is seen
many times during the morning’s service, by Peggotty, who likes to
make herself as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is
not in flames. But though Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much
offended if mine does, and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat,
that I am to look at the clergyman. But I can’t always look at him
- I know him without that white thing on, and I am afraid of his
wondering why I stare so, and perhaps stopping the service to
inquire - and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful thing to gape, but I
must do something. I look at my mother, but she pretends not to see
me. I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces at me. I look
at the sunlight coming in at the open door through the porch, and
there I see a stray sheep - I don’t mean a sinner, but mutton -
half making up his mind to come into the church. I feel that if I
looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say something out
loud; and what would become of me then! I look up at the monumental
tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers late of this
parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must have been, when
affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in
vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he was in
vain; and if so, how he likes to be reminded of it once a week. I
look from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit; and
think what a good place it would be to play in, and what a castle
it would make, with another boy coming up the stairs to attack it,
and having the velvet cushion with the tassels thrown down on his
head. In time my eyes gradually shut up; and, from seeming to hear
the clergyman singing a drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing,
until I fall off the seat with a crash, and am taken out, more dead
than alive, by Peggotty.

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed
bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and
the ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the
bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back,
beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are - a
very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence,
and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees,
riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other
garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand
by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A
great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. We are
playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlour. When my
mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I
watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers, and
straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I do that she
likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.

That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and a sense
that we were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted
ourselves in most things to her direction, were among the first
opinions - if they may be so called - that I ever derived from what
I saw.

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire,
alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have
read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply
interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had
done, that they were a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading,
and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until
my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I
would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to
bed. I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to
swell and grow immensely large. I propped my eyelids open with my
two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at her as she sat at
work; at the little bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread - how
old it looked, being so wrinkled in all directions! - at the little
house with a thatched roof, where the yard-measure lived; at her
work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral
(with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass thimble on her
finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so sleepy, that I
knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was gone.

She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me. And then
she stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn
out to its thread’s length.

‘But were you ever married, Peggotty?’ says I. ‘You are a very
handsome woman, an’t you?’

I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly;
but of another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect
example. There was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on
which my mother had painted a nosegay. The ground-work of that
stool, and Peggotty’s complexion appeared to me to be one and the
same thing. The stool was smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that
made no difference.

I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so
curiously at me.

‘My opinion is,’ said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a
little indecision and going on with her work, ‘that I never was
married myself, Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s
all I know about the subject.’

‘You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?’ said I, after
sitting quiet for a minute.

I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I
was quite mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a
stocking of her own), and opening her arms wide, took my curly head
within them, and gave it a good squeeze. I know it was a good
squeeze, because, being very plump, whenever she made any little
exertion after she was dressed, some of the buttons on the back of
her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting to the opposite
side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.

‘Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,’ said
Peggotty, who was not quite right in the name yet, ‘for I an’t
heard half enough.’

I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why
she was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned
to those monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left
their eggs in the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from
them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they were
unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and we
went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of
timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole crocodile
gauntlet. I did, at least; but I had my doubts of Peggotty, who was
thoughtfully sticking her needle into various parts of her face and
arms, all the time.

We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators,
when the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was
my mother, looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a
gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked
home with us from church last Sunday.

As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her
arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged
little fellow than a monarch - or something like that; for my later
understanding comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked him, over her shoulder.

He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn’t like him or his
deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my
mother’s in touching me - which it did. I put it away, as well as I
could.

‘Oh, Davy!’ remonstrated my mother.

‘Dear boy!’ said the gentleman. ‘I cannot wonder at his
devotion!’

I never saw such a beautiful colour on my mother’s face before.
She gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her
shawl, turned to thank the gentleman for taking so much trouble as
to bring her home. She put out her hand to him as she spoke, and,
as he met it with his own, she glanced, I thought, at me.

‘Let us say “good night”, my fine boy,’ said the gentleman, when
he had bent his head - I saw him! - over my mother’s little
glove.

‘Good night!’ said I.

‘Come! Let us be the best friends in the world!’ said the
gentleman, laughing. ‘Shake hands!’

My right hand was in my mother’s left, so I gave him the
other.

‘Why, that’s the Wrong hand, Davy!’ laughed the gentleman.

My mother drew my right hand forward, but I was resolved, for my
former reason, not to give it him, and I did not. I gave him the
other, and he shook it heartily, and said I was a brave fellow, and
went away.

At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and give us a
last look with his ill-omened black eyes, before the door was
shut.

Peggotty, who had not said a word or moved a finger, secured the
fastenings instantly, and we all went into the parlour. My mother,
contrary to her usual habit, instead of coming to the elbow-chair
by the fire, remained at the other end of the room, and sat singing
to herself.

- ‘Hope you have had a pleasant evening, ma’am,’ said Peggotty,
standing as stiff as a barrel in the centre of the room, with a
candlestick in her hand.

‘Much obliged to you, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, in a
cheerful voice, ‘I have had a very pleasant evening.’

‘A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,’ suggested
Peggotty.

‘A very agreeable change, indeed,’ returned my mother.

Peggotty continuing to stand motionless in the middle of the
room, and my mother resuming her singing, I fell asleep, though I
was not so sound asleep but that I could hear voices, without
hearing what they said. When I half awoke from this uncomfortable
doze, I found Peggotty and my mother both in tears, and both
talking.

‘Not such a one as this, Mr. Copperfield wouldn’t have liked,’
said Peggotty. ‘That I say, and that I swear!’

‘Good Heavens!’ cried my mother, ‘you’ll drive me mad! Was ever
any poor girl so ill-used by her servants as I am! Why do I do
myself the injustice of calling myself a girl? Have I never been
married, Peggotty?’

‘God knows you have, ma’am,’ returned Peggotty. ‘Then, how can
you dare,’ said my mother - ‘you know I don’t mean how can you
dare, Peggotty, but how can you have the heart - to make me so
uncomfortable and say such bitter things to me, when you are well
aware that I haven’t, out of this place, a single friend to turn
to?’

‘The more’s the reason,’ returned Peggotty, ‘for saying that it
won’t do. No! That it won’t do. No! No price could make it do. No!’
- I thought Peggotty would have thrown the candlestick away, she
was so emphatic with it.

‘How can you be so aggravating,’ said my mother, shedding more
tears than before, ‘as to talk in such an unjust manner! How can
you go on as if it was all settled and arranged, Peggotty, when I
tell you over and over again, you cruel thing, that beyond the
commonest civilities nothing has passed! You talk of admiration.
What am I to do? If people are so silly as to indulge the
sentiment, is it my fault? What am I to do, I ask you? Would you
wish me to shave my head and black my face, or disfigure myself
with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort? I dare say you
would, Peggotty. I dare say you’d quite enjoy it.’

Peggotty seemed to take this aspersion very much to heart, I
thought.

‘And my dear boy,’ cried my mother, coming to the elbow-chair in
which I was, and caressing me, ‘my own little Davy! Is it to be
hinted to me that I am wanting in affection for my precious
treasure, the dearest little fellow that ever was!’

‘Nobody never went and hinted no such a thing,’ said
Peggotty.

‘You did, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You know you did. What
else was it possible to infer from what you said, you unkind
creature, when you know as well as I do, that on his account only
last quarter I wouldn’t buy myself a new parasol, though that old
green one is frayed the whole way up, and the fringe is perfectly
mangy? You know it is, Peggotty. You can’t deny it.’ Then, turning
affectionately to me, with her cheek against mine, ‘Am I a naughty
mama to you, Davy? Am I a nasty, cruel, selfish, bad mama? Say I
am, my child; say “yes”, dear boy, and Peggotty will love you; and
Peggotty’s love is a great deal better than mine, Davy. I don’t
love you at all, do I?’

At this, we all fell a-crying together. I think I was the
loudest of the party, but I am sure we were all sincere about it. I
was quite heart-broken myself, and am afraid that in the first
transports of wounded tenderness I called Peggotty a ‘Beast’. That
honest creature was in deep affliction, I remember, and must have
become quite buttonless on the occasion; for a little volley of
those explosives went off, when, after having made it up with my
mother, she kneeled down by the elbow-chair, and made it up with
me.

We went to bed greatly dejected. My sobs kept waking me, for a
long time; and when one very strong sob quite hoisted me up in bed,
I found my mother sitting on the coverlet, and leaning over me. I
fell asleep in her arms, after that, and slept soundly.

Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the gentleman
again, or whether there was any greater lapse of time before he
reappeared, I cannot recall. I don’t profess to be clear about
dates. But there he was, in church, and he walked home with us
afterwards. He came in, too, to look at a famous geranium we had,
in the parlour-window. It did not appear to me that he took much
notice of it, but before he went he asked my mother to give him a
bit of the blossom. She begged him to choose it for himself, but he
refused to do that - I could not understand why - so she plucked it
for him, and gave it into his hand. He said he would never, never
part with it any more; and I thought he must be quite a fool not to
know that it would fall to pieces in a day or two.

Peggotty began to be less with us, of an evening, than she had
always been. My mother deferred to her very much - more than usual,
it occurred to me - and we were all three excellent friends; still
we were different from what we used to be, and were not so
comfortable among ourselves. Sometimes I fancied that Peggotty
perhaps objected to my mother’s wearing all the pretty dresses she
had in her drawers, or to her going so often to visit at that
neighbour’s; but I couldn’t, to my satisfaction, make out how it
was.

Gradually, I became used to seeing the gentleman with the black
whiskers. I liked him no better than at first, and had the same
uneasy jealousy of him; but if I had any reason for it beyond a
child’s instinctive dislike, and a general idea that Peggotty and I
could make much of my mother without any help, it certainly was not
the reason that I might have found if I had been older. No such
thing came into my mind, or near it. I could observe, in little
pieces, as it were; but as to making a net of a number of these
pieces, and catching anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond
me.

One autumn morning I was with my mother in the front garden,
when Mr. Murdstone - I knew him by that name now - came by, on
horseback. He reined up his horse to salute my mother, and said he
was going to Lowestoft to see some friends who were there with a
yacht, and merrily proposed to take me on the saddle before him if
I would like the ride.

The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse seemed to like
the idea of the ride so much himself, as he stood snorting and
pawing at the garden-gate, that I had a great desire to go. So I
was sent upstairs to Peggotty to be made spruce; and in the
meantime Mr. Murdstone dismounted, and, with his horse’s bridle
drawn over his arm, walked slowly up and down on the outer side of
the sweetbriar fence, while my mother walked slowly up and down on
the inner to keep him company. I recollect Peggotty and I peeping
out at them from my little window; I recollect how closely they
seemed to be examining the sweetbriar between them, as they
strolled along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic temper,
Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong
way, excessively hard.

Mr. Murdstone and I were soon off, and trotting along on the
green turf by the side of the road. He held me quite easily with
one arm, and I don’t think I was restless usually; but I could not
make up my mind to sit in front of him without turning my head
sometimes, and looking up in his face. He had that kind of shallow
black eye - I want a better word to express an eye that has no
depth in it to be looked into - which, when it is abstracted, seems
from some peculiarity of light to be disfigured, for a moment at a
time, by a cast. Several times when I glanced at him, I observed
that appearance with a sort of awe, and wondered what he was
thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers were blacker and
thicker, looked at so near, than even I had given them credit for
being. A squareness about the lower part of his face, and the
dotted indication of the strong black beard he shaved close every
day, reminded me of the wax-work that had travelled into our
neighbourhood some half-a-year before. This, his regular eyebrows,
and the rich white, and black, and brown, of his complexion -
confound his complexion, and his memory! - made me think him, in
spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man. I have no doubt that
my poor dear mother thought him so too.

We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking
cigars in a room by themselves. Each of them was lying on at least
four chairs, and had a large rough jacket on. In a corner was a
heap of coats and boat-cloaks, and a flag, all bundled up
together.

They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of manner,
when we came in, and said, ‘Halloa, Murdstone! We thought you were
dead!’

‘Not yet,’ said Mr. Murdstone.

‘And who’s this shaver?’ said one of the gentlemen, taking hold
of me.

I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of
Sheffield; for, at first, I really thought it was I.

There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of
Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily
when he was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused
also. After some laughing, the gentleman whom he had called
Quinion, said:

‘And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in reference to
the projected business?’

‘Why, I don’t know that Brooks understands much about it at
present,’ replied Mr. Murdstone; ‘but he is not generally
favourable, I believe.’

There was more laughter at this, and Mr. Quinion said he would
ring the bell for some sherry in which to drink to Brooks. This he
did; and when the wine came, he made me have a little, with a
biscuit, and, before I drank it, stand up and say, ‘Confusion to
Brooks of Sheffield!’ The toast was received with great applause,
and such hearty laughter that it made me laugh too; at which they
laughed the more. In short, we quite enjoyed ourselves.

We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the grass,
and looked at things through a telescope - I could make out nothing
myself when it was put to my eye, but I pretended I could - and
then we came back to the hotel to an early dinner. All the time we
were out, the two gentlemen smoked incessantly - which, I thought,
if I might judge from the smell of their rough coats, they must
have been doing, ever since the coats had first come home from the
tailor’s. I must not forget that we went on board the yacht, where
they all three descended into the cabin, and were busy with some
papers. I saw them quite hard at work, when I looked down through
the open skylight. They left me, during this time, with a very nice
man with a very large head of red hair and a very small shiny hat
upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat on, with
‘Skylark’ in capital letters across the chest. I thought it was his
name; and that as he lived on board ship and hadn’t a street door
to put his name on, he put it there instead; but when I called him
Mr. Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.

I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier
than the two gentlemen. They were very gay and careless. They joked
freely with one another, but seldom with him. It appeared to me
that he was more clever and cold than they were, and that they
regarded him with something of my own feeling. I remarked that,
once or twice when Mr. Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr.
Murdstone sideways, as if to make sure of his not being displeased;
and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the other gentleman) was in high
spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave him a secret caution with
his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was sitting stern and
silent. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed at all that
day, except at the Sheffield joke - and that, by the by, was his
own.

We went home early in the evening. It was a very fine evening,
and my mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbriar, while I
was sent in to get my tea. When he was gone, my mother asked me all
about the day I had had, and what they had said and done. I
mentioned what they had said about her, and she laughed, and told
me they were impudent fellows who talked nonsense - but I knew it
pleased her. I knew it quite as well as I know it now. I took the
opportunity of asking if she was at all acquainted with Mr. Brooks
of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she supposed he must be a
manufacturer in the knife and fork way.

Can I say of her face - altered as I have reason to remember it,
perished as I know it is - that it is gone, when here it comes
before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may
choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of her innocent
and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath
falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night? Can I say she ever
changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only;
and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is,
still holds fast what it cherished then?

I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this
talk, and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully
by the side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her hands, and
laughing, said:

‘What was it they said, Davy? Tell me again. I can’t believe
it.’

‘“Bewitching -”’ I began.

My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.

‘It was never bewitching,’ she said, laughing. ‘It never could
have been bewitching, Davy. Now I know it wasn’t!’

‘Don’t tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them. I am
dreadfully angry with them myself; but I would rather Peggotty
didn’t know.’

I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and over
again, and I soon fell fast asleep.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next
day when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition
I am about to mention; but it was probably about two months
afterwards.

We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out
as before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and
the bit of wax, and the box with St. Paul’s on the lid, and the
crocodile book, when Peggotty, after looking at me several times,
and opening her mouth as if she were going to speak, without doing
it - which I thought was merely gaping, or I should have been
rather alarmed - said coaxingly:

‘Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend
a fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? Wouldn’t that be a
treat?’

‘Oh, what an agreeable man he is!’ cried Peggotty, holding up
her hands. ‘Then there’s the sea; and the boats and ships; and the
fishermen; and the beach; and Am to play with -’

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter;
but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.

I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it
would indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?

‘Why then I’ll as good as bet a guinea,’ said Peggotty, intent
upon my face, ‘that she’ll let us go. I’ll ask her, if you like, as
soon as ever she comes home. There now!’

‘But what’s she to do while we’re away?’ said I, putting my
small elbows on the table to argue the point. ‘She can’t live by
herself.’

If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the
heel of that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed,
and not worth darning.

‘I say! Peggotty! She can’t live by herself, you know.’

‘Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking at me again at last.
‘Don’t you know? She’s going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs.
Grayper. Mrs. Grayper’s going to have a lot of company.’

Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the
utmost impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper’s
(for it was that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get
leave to carry out this great idea. Without being nearly so much
surprised as I had expected, my mother entered into it readily; and
it was all arranged that night, and my board and lodging during the
visit were to be paid for.

The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that
it came soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and
half afraid that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other
great convulsion of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition.
We were to go in a carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning
after breakfast. I would have given any money to have been allowed
to wrap myself up over-night, and sleep in my hat and boots.

It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to
recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how
little I suspected what I did leave for ever.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier’s cart was at the
gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for
her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before,
made me cry. I am glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I
felt her heart beat against mine.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my
mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she
might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness
and love with which she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.

As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to
where she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so
moved. I was looking back round the awning of the cart, and
wondered what business it was of his. Peggotty, who was also
looking back on the other side, seemed anything but satisfied; as
the face she brought back in the cart denoted.

I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this
supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like
the boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home
again by the buttons she would shed.

Chapter3 I
Have a Change

The carrier’s horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should
hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to
keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied,
indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection,
but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier
had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and of drooping
sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his
knees. I say ‘drove’, but it struck me that the cart would have
gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all
that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but
whistling.

Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would
have lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by
the same conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal.
Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the
basket, her hold of which never relaxed; and I could not have
believed unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman
could have snored so much.

We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a
long time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at
other places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw
Yarmouth. It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I
carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river;
and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round
as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat.
But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the
poles; which would account for it.

As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect
lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that
a mound or so might have improved it; and also that if the land had
been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the
tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it
would have been nicer. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis
than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that,
for her part, she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth Bloater.

When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and
smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors
walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones,
I felt that I had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as
much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great
complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who
had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon
the whole, the finest place in the universe.

‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty, ‘growed out of
knowledge!’

He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked
me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at
first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never
come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had
the advantage of me. But our intimacy was much advanced by his
taking me on his back to carry me home. He was, now, a huge, strong
fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered;
but with a simpering boy’s face and curly light hair that gave him
quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a canvas jacket, and a
pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite
as well alone, without any legs in them. And you couldn’t so
properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top,
like an old building, with something pitchy.

Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his
arm, and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned
down lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand,
and went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders’ yards,
shipwrights’ yards, ship-breakers’ yards, caulkers’ yards, riggers’
lofts, smiths’ forges, and a great litter of such places, until we
came out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance; when
Ham said,

‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!’

I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the
wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no
house could I make out. There was a black barge, or some other kind
of superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground,
with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking
very cosily; but nothing else in the way of a habitation that was
visible to me.

‘That’s not it?’ said I. ‘That ship-looking thing?’

‘That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ returned Ham.

If it had been Aladdin’s palace, roc’s egg and all, I suppose I
could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living
in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was
roofed in, and there were little windows in it; but the wonderful
charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been
upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended
to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me.
If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it
small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but never having been designed
for any such use, it became a perfect abode.

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There
was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the
chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a
lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child
who was trundling a hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by
a bible; and the tray, if it had tumbled down, would have smashed a
quantity of cups and saucers and a teapot that were grouped around
the book. On the walls there were some common coloured pictures,
framed and glazed, of scripture subjects; such as I have never seen
since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole interior of
Peggotty’s brother’s house again, at one view. Abraham in red going
to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast into a den of
green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over the little
mantelshelf, was a picture of the ‘Sarah Jane’ lugger, built at
Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work
of art, combining composition with carpentry, which I considered to
be one of the most enviable possessions that the world could
afford. There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use
of which I did not divine then; and some lockers and boxes and
conveniences of that sort, which served for seats and eked out the
chairs.

All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the threshold
- child-like, according to my theory - and then Peggotty opened a
little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and
most desirable bedroom ever seen - in the stern of the vessel; with
a little window, where the rudder used to go through; a little
looking-glass, just the right height for me, nailed against the
wall, and framed with oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was
just room enough to get into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue
mug on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and
the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its
brightness. One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful
house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching, that when I
took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt
exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this
discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her
brother dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards
found that a heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful
conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching
whatever they laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little
wooden outhouse where the pots and kettles were kept.

We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I
had seen curtseying at the door when I was on Ham’s back, about a
quarter of a mile off. Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or
I thought her so) with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn’t
let me kiss her when I offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By
and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs,
melted butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a hairy man with a
very good-natured face came home. As he called Peggotty ‘Lass’, and
gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no doubt, from the
general propriety of her conduct, that he was her brother; and so
he turned out - being presently introduced to me as Mr. Peggotty,
the master of the house.

‘Glad to see you, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You’ll find us
rough, sir, but you’ll find us ready.’

I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in
such a delightful place.

I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I
could wish, and that she desired her compliments - which was a
polite fiction on my part.

‘I’m much obleeged to her, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Well,
sir, if you can make out here, fur a fortnut, ‘long wi’ her,’
nodding at his sister, ‘and Ham, and little Em’ly, we shall be
proud of your company.’

Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner,
Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water,
remarking that ‘cold would never get his muck off’. He soon
returned, greatly improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I
couldn’t help thinking his face had this in common with the
lobsters, crabs, and crawfish, - that it went into the hot water
very black, and came out very red.

After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the
nights being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most
delicious retreat that the imagination of man could conceive. To
hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was
creeping over the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire,
and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a
boat, was like enchantment. Little Em’ly had overcome her shyness,
and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and least of the
lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just fitted
into the chimney corner. Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron, was
knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her
needlework was as much at home with St. Paul’s and the bit of
wax-candle, as if they had never known any other roof. Ham, who had
been giving me my first lesson in all-fours, was trying to
recollect a scheme of telling fortunes with the dirty cards, and
was printing off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he
turned. Mr. Peggotty was smoking his pipe. I felt it was a time for
conversation and confidence.

‘Mr. Peggotty!’ says I.

‘Sir,’ says he.

‘Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a
sort of ark?’

Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:

‘No, sir. I never giv him no name.’

‘Who gave him that name, then?’ said I, putting question number
two of the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.

‘Why, sir, his father giv it him,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘I thought you were his father!’

‘My brother Joe was his father,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after a respectful pause.

‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham’s
father, and began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his
relationship to anybody else there. I was so curious to know, that
I made up my mind to have it out with Mr. Peggotty.

I couldn’t help it. ‘- Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after
another respectful silence.

‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got
to the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I
said:

‘Haven’t you any children, Mr. Peggotty?’

‘No, master,’ he answered with a short laugh. ‘I’m a
bacheldore.’

‘A bachelor!’ I said, astonished. ‘Why, who’s that, Mr.
Peggotty?’ pointing to the person in the apron who was
knitting.

‘That’s Missis Gummidge,’ said Mr. Peggotty.

‘Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?’

But at this point Peggotty - I mean my own peculiar Peggotty -
made such impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions,
that I could only sit and look at all the silent company, until it
was time to go to bed. Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin,
she informed me that Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece,
whom my host had at different times adopted in their childhood,
when they were left destitute: and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow
of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor
man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as
steel - those were her similes. The only subject, she informed me,
on which he ever showed a violent temper or swore an oath, was this
generosity of his; and if it were ever referred to, by any one of
them, he struck the table a heavy blow with his right hand (had
split it on one such occasion), and swore a dreadful oath that he
would be ‘Gormed’ if he didn’t cut and run for good, if it was ever
mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that
nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb
passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting
a most solemn imprecation.

I was very sensible of my entertainer’s goodness, and listened
to the women’s going to bed in another little crib like mine at the
opposite end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two
hammocks for themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in
a very luxurious state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy. As
slumber gradually stole upon me, I heard the wind howling out at
sea and coming on across the flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy
apprehension of the great deep rising in the night. But I bethought
myself that I was in a boat, after all; and that a man like Mr.
Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything did
happen.

Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Almost as soon as
it shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed,
and out with little Em’ly, picking up stones upon the beach.

‘You’re quite a sailor, I suppose?’ I said to Em’ly. I don’t
know that I supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of
gallantry to say something; and a shining sail close to us made
such a pretty little image of itself, at the moment, in her bright
eye, that it came into my head to say this.

‘No,’ replied Em’ly, shaking her head, ‘I’m afraid of the
sea.’

‘Afraid!’ I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking
very big at the mighty ocean. ‘I an’t!’

‘Ah! but it’s cruel,’ said Em’ly. ‘I have seen it very cruel to
some of our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house,
all to pieces.’

‘I hope it wasn’t the boat that -’

‘That father was drownded in?’ said Em’ly. ‘No. Not that one, I
never see that boat.’

‘Nor him?’ I asked her.

Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘Not to remember!’

Here was a coincidence! I immediately went into an explanation
how I had never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had
always lived by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and
lived so then, and always meant to live so; and how my father’s
grave was in the churchyard near our house, and shaded by a tree,
beneath the boughs of which I had walked and heard the birds sing
many a pleasant morning. But there were some differences between
Em’ly’s orphanhood and mine, it appeared. She had lost her mother
before her father; and where her father’s grave was no one knew,
except that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea.

‘Besides,’ said Em’ly, as she looked about for shells and
pebbles, ‘your father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady;
and my father was a fisherman and my mother was a fisherman’s
daughter, and my uncle Dan is a fisherman.’

‘Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?’ said I.

‘Uncle Dan - yonder,’ answered Em’ly, nodding at the
boat-house.

‘Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think?’

‘Good?’ said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, I’d give him a
sky-blue coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet
waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a
box of money.’

I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these
treasures. I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture
him quite at his ease in the raiment proposed for him by his
grateful little niece, and that I was particularly doubtful of the
policy of the cocked hat; but I kept these sentiments to
myself.

Little Em’ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her
enumeration of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision.
We went on again, picking up shells and pebbles.

‘You would like to be a lady?’ I said.

Emily looked at me, and laughed and nodded ‘yes’.

‘I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks
together, then. Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We
wouldn’t mind then, when there comes stormy weather. - Not for our
own sakes, I mean. We would for the poor fishermen’s, to be sure,
and we’d help ’em with money when they come to any hurt.’ This
seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and therefore not at all
improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in the contemplation of
it, and little Em’ly was emboldened to say, shyly,

‘Don’t you think you are afraid of the sea, now?’

It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had
seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken
to my heels, with an awful recollection of her drowned relations.
However, I said ‘No,’ and I added, ‘You don’t seem to be either,
though you say you are,’ - for she was walking much too near the
brink of a sort of old jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled
upon, and I was afraid of her falling over.

‘I’m not afraid in this way,’ said little Em’ly. ‘But I wake
when it blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham and
believe I hear ’em crying out for help. That’s why I should like so
much to be a lady. But I’m not afraid in this way. Not a bit. Look
here!’

She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which
protruded from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water
at some height, without the least defence. The incident is so
impressed on my remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could
draw its form here, I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and
little Em’ly springing forward to her destruction (as it appeared
to me), with a look that I have never forgotten, directed far out
to sea.

The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back
safe to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had
uttered; fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But
there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have
been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities
of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her
wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into
danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her
dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day?
There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, if the
life before her could have been revealed to me at a glance, and so
revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it, and if her
preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I ought to
have held it up to save her. There has been a time since - I do not
say it lasted long, but it has been - when I have asked myself the
question, would it have been better for little Em’ly to have had
the waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when
I have answered Yes, it would have been.

This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But
let it stand.

We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we
thought curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into
the water - I hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be
quite certain whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for
doing so, or the reverse - and then made our way home to Mr.
Peggotty’s dwelling. We stopped under the lee of the
lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent kiss, and went in to
breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.

‘Like two young mavishes,’ Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant,
in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a
compliment.

Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved
that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity
and more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a
later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy
raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which
etherealized, and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon,
she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away before my
eyes, I don’t think I should have regarded it as much more than I
had had reason to expect.

We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving
manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not
grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I
told Em’ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored
me I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a
sword. She said she did, and I have no doubt she did.

As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other
difficulty in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble,
because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing
older, than we did for growing younger. We were the admiration of
Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when
we sat, lovingly, on our little locker side by side, ‘Lor! wasn’t
it beautiful!’ Mr. Peggotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and
Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing else. They had
something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might
have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.

I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself
so agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the
circumstances of her residence with Mr. Peggotty. Mrs. Gummidge’s
was rather a fretful disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes
than was comfortable for other parties in so small an
establishment. I was very sorry for her; but there were moments
when it would have been more agreeable, I thought, if Mrs. Gummidge
had had a convenient apartment of her own to retire to, and had
stopped there until her spirits revived.

Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The
Willing Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or
third evening of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge’s looking up at
the Dutch clock, between eight and nine, and saying he was there,
and that, what was more, she had known in the morning he would go
there.

Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst
into tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. ‘I am a lone lorn
creetur’,’ were Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant
occurrence took place, ‘and everythink goes contrary with me.’

‘Oh, it’ll soon leave off,’ said Peggotty - I again mean our
Peggotty - ‘and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to
you than to us.’

‘I feel it more,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.

It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs.
Gummidge’s peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the
warmest and snuggest in the place, as her chair was certainly the
easiest, but it didn’t suit her that day at all. She was constantly
complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her
back which she called ‘the creeps’. At last she shed tears on that
subject, and said again that she was ‘a lone lorn creetur’ and
everythink went contrary with her’.

‘It is certainly very cold,’ said Peggotty. ‘Everybody must feel
it so.’

‘I feel it more than other people,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.

So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately
after me, to whom the preference was given as a visitor of
distinction. The fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a
little burnt. We all acknowledged that we felt this something of a
disappointment; but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than we
did, and shed tears again, and made that former declaration with
great bitterness.

Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o’clock,
this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a
very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working
cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots;
and I, with little Em’ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs.
Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and
had never raised her eyes since tea.

‘Well, Mates,’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, ‘and how are
you?’

We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him,
except Mrs. Gummidge, who only shook her head over her
knitting.

‘What’s amiss?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands.
‘Cheer up, old Mawther!’ (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.)

Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took
out an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead
of putting it in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and
still kept it out, ready for use.

‘Yes, yes, it is,’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I know what I am. I
know that I am a lone lorn creetur’, and not only that everythink
goes contrary with me, but that I go contrary with everybody. Yes,
yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It’s my
misfortun’.’

I really couldn’t help thinking, as I sat taking in all this,
that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family
besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only
answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up.

‘I an’t what I could wish myself to be,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I
am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary.
I feel my troubles, and they make me contrary. I wish I didn’t feel
’em, but I do. I wish I could be hardened to ’em, but I an’t. I
make the house uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your
sister so all day, and Master Davy.’

Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, ‘No, you haven’t,
Mrs. Gummidge,’ in great mental distress.

‘It’s far from right that I should do it,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
‘It an’t a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am
a lone lorn creetur’, and had much better not make myself contrary
here. If thinks must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary
myself, let me go contrary in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into
the house, and die and be a riddance!’

Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to
bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace
of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us,
and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment
still animating his face, said in a whisper:

‘She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’

I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was
supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me
to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her
brother always took that for a received truth on such occasions,
and that it always had a moving effect upon him. Some time after he
was in his hammock that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham,
‘Poor thing! She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’ And whenever Mrs.
Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of
our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the same
thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the
tenderest commiseration.

So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the
variation of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of going
out and coming in, and altered Ham’s engagements also. When the
latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the
boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row. I don’t
know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly
associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains
with most people, in reference especially to the associations of
their childhood. I never hear the name, or read the name, of
Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the
beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em’ly leaning on my
shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun,
away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us
the ships, like their own shadows.

At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the
separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of
mind at leaving little Em’ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to
the public-house where the carrier put up, and I promised, on the
road, to write to her. (I redeemed that promise afterwards, in
characters larger than those in which apartments are usually
announced in manuscript, as being to let.) We were greatly overcome
at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my
heart, I had one made that day.

Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful
to my home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I
was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young
conscience seemed to point that way with a ready finger; and I
felt, all the more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my
nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend.

This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we
drew, the more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more
excited I was to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty,
instead of sharing in those transports, tried to check them (though
very kindly), and looked confused and out of sorts.

Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when
the carrier’s horse pleased - and did. How well I recollect it, on
a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!

The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in
my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange
servant.

Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting
out of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon
of herself, but I felt too blank and strange to tell her so. When
she had got down, she took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into
the kitchen; and shut the door.

‘Peggotty!’ said I, quite frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!’ she
answered, assuming an air of sprightliness.

‘Something’s the matter, I’m sure. Where’s mama?’

‘Where’s mama, Master Davy?’ repeated Peggotty.

‘Yes. Why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and what have we come
in here for? Oh, Peggotty!’ My eyes were full, and I felt as if I
were going to tumble down.

Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and
then sat down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a
turn.

I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another
turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at
her in anxious inquiry.

‘You see, dear, I should have told you before now,’ said
Peggotty, ‘but I hadn’t an opportunity. I ought to have made it,
perhaps, but I couldn’t azackly’ - that was always the substitute
for exactly, in Peggotty’s militia of words - ‘bring my mind to
it.’

‘Go on, Peggotty,’ said I, more frightened than before.

‘Master Davy,’ said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking
hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way. ‘What do you think?
You have got a Pa!’

I trembled, and turned white. Something - I don’t know what, or
how - connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising
of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.

‘A new one,’ said Peggotty.

‘A new one?’ I repeated.

Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that
was very hard, and, putting out her hand, said:

‘Come and see him.’

‘I don’t want to see him.’

- ‘And your mama,’ said Peggotty.

I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour,
where she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the
other, Mr. Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose
hurriedly, but timidly I thought.

‘Now, Clara my dear,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘Recollect! control
yourself, always control yourself! Davy boy, how do you do?’

I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and
kissed my mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder,
and sat down again to her work. I could not look at her, I could
not look at him, I knew quite well that he was looking at us both;
and I turned to the window and looked out there, at some shrubs
that were drooping their heads in the cold.

As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs. My old dear
bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled
downstairs to find anything that was like itself, so altered it all
seemed; and roamed into the yard. I very soon started back from
there, for the empty dog-kennel was filled up with a great dog -
deep mouthed and black-haired like Him - and he was very angry at
the sight of me, and sprang out to get at me.

Chapter4 I
Fall into Disgrace

If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing
that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day - who
sleeps there now, I wonder! - to bear witness for me what a heavy
heart I carried to it. I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard
bark after me all the way while I climbed the stairs; and, looking
as blank and strange upon the room as the room looked upon me, sat
down with my small hands crossed, and thought.

I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the
cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in
the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the
washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a
discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge
under the influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but,
except that I was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I
never thought why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to
consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em’ly, and had
been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want
me, or to care about me, half as much as she did. This made such a
very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself up in
a corner of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep.

I was awoke by somebody saying ‘Here he is!’ and uncovering my
hot head. My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it
was one of them who had done it.

‘Davy,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’

I thought it was very strange that she should ask me, and
answered, ‘Nothing.’ I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide
my trembling lip, which answered her with greater truth. ‘Davy,’
said my mother. ‘Davy, my child!’

I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected
me so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in
the bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she
would have raised me up.

‘This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!’ said my mother.
‘I have no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your
conscience, I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or
against anybody who is dear to me? What do you mean by it,
Peggotty?’

Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered,
in a sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after
dinner, ‘Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have
said this minute, may you never be truly sorry!’

‘It’s enough to distract me,’ cried my mother. ‘In my honeymoon,
too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think,
and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you
naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!’ cried my
mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful
manner, ‘what a troublesome world this is, when one has the most
right to expect it to be as agreeable as possible!’

I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor
Peggotty’s, and slipped to my feet at the bed-side. It was Mr.
Murdstone’s hand, and he kept it on my arm as he said:

‘I am very sorry, Edward,’ said my mother. ‘I meant to be very
good, but I am so uncomfortable.’

‘Indeed!’ he answered. ‘That’s a bad hearing, so soon,
Clara.’

‘I say it’s very hard I should be made so now,’ returned my
mother, pouting; ‘and it is - very hard - isn’t it?’

He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew
as well, when I saw my mother’s head lean down upon his shoulder,
and her arm touch his neck - I knew as well that he could mould her
pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did
it.

‘Go you below, my love,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘David and I will
come down, together. My friend,’ turning a darkening face on
Peggotty, when he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with
a nod and a smile; ‘do you know your mistress’s name?’

‘She has been my mistress a long time, sir,’ answered Peggotty,
‘I ought to know it.’ ‘That’s true,’ he answered. ‘But I thought I
heard you, as I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not
hers. She has taken mine, you know. Will you remember that?’

Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out
of the room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was
expected to go, and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were
left alone, he shut the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding
me standing before him, looked steadily into my eyes. I felt my own
attracted, no less steadily, to his. As I recall our being opposed
thus, face to face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and
high.

‘David,’ he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them
together, ‘if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what
do you think I do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I beat him.’

I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in
my silence, that my breath was shorter now.

‘I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, “I’ll conquer
that fellow”; and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I
should do it. What is that upon your face?’

‘Dirt,’ I said.

He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had
asked the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I
believe my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him
so.

‘You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,’ he
said, with a grave smile that belonged to him, ‘and you understood
me very well, I see. Wash that face, sir, and come down with
me.’

He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like
Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly.
I had little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would
have knocked me down without the least compunction, if I had
hesitated.

‘Clara, my dear,’ he said, when I had done his bidding, and he
walked me into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm; ‘you
will not be made uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon
improve our youthful humours.’

God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I
might have been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind
word at that season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of
pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to
me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart
henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have
made me respect instead of hate him. I thought my mother was sorry
to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and that,
presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with her eyes
more sorrowfully still - missing, perhaps, some freedom in my
childish tread - but the word was not spoken, and the time for it
was gone.

We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of
my mother - I am afraid I liked him none the better for that - and
she was very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an
elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was
expected that evening. I am not certain whether I found out then,
or afterwards, that, without being actively concerned in any
business, he had some share in, or some annual charge upon the
profits of, a wine-merchant’s house in London, with which his
family had been connected from his great-grandfather’s time, and in
which his sister had a similar interest; but I may mention it in
this place, whether or no.

After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was
meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to
slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house, a coach
drove up to the garden-gate and he went out to receive the visitor.
My mother followed him. I was timidly following her, when she
turned round at the parlour door, in the dusk, and taking me in her
embrace as she had been used to do, whispered me to love my new
father and be obedient to him. She did this hurriedly and secretly,
as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and, putting out her hand behind
her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he was standing
in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew hers through his
arm.

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady
she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face
and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her
large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from
wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought
with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on
the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took
her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a
very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and
shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a
metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome,
and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation.
Then she looked at me, and said:

Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very
well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent
grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:

‘Wants manner!’

Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the
favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that
time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes
were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I
peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel
fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself
when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in
formidable array.

As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no
intention of ever going again. She began to ‘help’ my mother next
morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting
things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost
the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her
being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man
secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this
delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely
hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without
clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him.

Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was
a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I
believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the
house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even
slept with one eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I
tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found
it couldn’t be done.

On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and
ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to
breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a
kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a
kiss, and said:

‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you
of all the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty and thoughtless’ -
my mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this
character - ‘to have any duties imposed upon you that can be
undertaken by me. If you’ll be so good as give me your keys, my
dear, I’ll attend to all this sort of thing in future.’

From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little
jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no
more to do with them than I had.

My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without
a shadow of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had been
developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he
signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and
said she thought she might have been consulted.

‘Clara!’ said Mr. Murdstone sternly. ‘Clara! I wonder at
you.’

‘Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!’ cried my mother,
‘and it’s very well for you to talk about firmness, but you
wouldn’t like it yourself.’

Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr.
and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed
my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I
nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was
another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant,
devil’s humour, that was in them both. The creed, as I should state
it now, was this. Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was
to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be
firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. Miss
Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by
relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. My mother
was another exception. She might be firm, and must be; but only in
bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other
firmness upon earth.

‘It’s very hard,’ said my mother, ‘that in my own house -’

‘My own house?’ repeated Mr. Murdstone. ‘Clara!’

‘Our own house, I mean,’ faltered my mother, evidently
frightened - ‘I hope you must know what I mean, Edward - it’s very
hard that in your own house I may not have a word to say about
domestic matters. I am sure I managed very well before we were
married. There’s evidence,’ said my mother, sobbing; ‘ask Peggotty
if I didn’t do very well when I wasn’t interfered with!’

‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end of this. I
go tomorrow.’

‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘be silent! How dare you to
insinuate that you don’t know my character better than your words
imply?’

‘I am sure,’ my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage,
and with many tears, ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I should be very
miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I don’t ask much. I am
not unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very
much obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be
consulted as a mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased,
once, with my being a little inexperienced and girlish, Edward - I
am sure you said so - but you seem to hate me for it now, you are
so severe.’

‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, again, ‘let there be an end of
this. I go tomorrow.’

Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief,
and held it before her eyes.

‘Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you surprise me!
You astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of
marrying an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her
character, and infusing into it some amount of that firmness and
decision of which it stood in need. But when Jane Murdstone is kind
enough to come to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume,
for my sake, a condition something like a housekeeper’s, and when
she meets with a base return -’

‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’ cried my mother, ‘don’t accuse me of
being ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I
was before. I have many faults, but not that. Oh, don’t, my
dear!’

‘When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,’ he went on, after waiting
until my mother was silent, ‘with a base return, that feeling of
mine is chilled and altered.’

‘There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone
in reply, ‘that can have the least weight with me. You lose
breath.’

‘Pray let us be friends,’ said my mother, ‘I couldn’t live under
coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have a great many defects,
I know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of
mind, to endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to
anything. I should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of
leaving -’ My mother was too much overcome to go on.

‘Jane Murdstone,’ said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, ‘any harsh
words between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so
unusual an occurrence has taken place tonight. I was betrayed into
it by another. Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by
another. Let us both try to forget it. And as this,’ he added,
after these magnanimous words, ‘is not a fit scene for the boy -
David, go to bed!’

I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my
eyes. I was so sorry for my mother’s distress; but I groped my way
out, and groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even
having the heart to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle
from her. When her coming up to look for me, an hour or so
afterwards, awoke me, she said that my mother had gone to bed
poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were sitting alone.

Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused
outside the parlour door, on hearing my mother’s voice. She was
very earnestly and humbly entreating Miss Murdstone’s pardon, which
that lady granted, and a perfect reconciliation took place. I never
knew my mother afterwards to give an opinion on any matter, without
first appealing to Miss Murdstone, or without having first
ascertained by some sure means, what Miss Murdstone’s opinion was;
and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out of temper (she was infirm
that way), move her hand towards her bag as if she were going to
take out the keys and offer to resign them to my mother, without
seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright.

The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the
Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought,
since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence
of Mr. Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let
anybody off from the utmost weight of the severest penalties he
could find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well remember the
tremendous visages with which we used to go to church, and the
changed air of the place. Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round,
and I file into the old pew first, like a guarded captive brought
to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet
gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows
close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no
Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone
mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a
cruel relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when
she says ‘miserable sinners’, as if she were calling all the
congregation names. Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother,
moving her lips timidly between the two, with one of them muttering
at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear
whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can be wrong, and
Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in Heaven can
be destroying angels. Again, if I move a finger or relax a muscle
of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her prayer-book, and makes
my side ache.

Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking
at my mother and at me, and whispering. Again, as the three go on
arm-in-arm, and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those
looks, and wonder if my mother’s step be really not so light as I
have seen it, and if the gaiety of her beauty be really almost
worried away. Again, I wonder whether any of the neighbours call to
mind, as I do, how we used to walk home together, she and I; and I
wonder stupidly about that, all the dreary dismal day.

There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-
school. Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother had
of course agreed with them. Nothing, however, was concluded on the
subject yet. In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home. Shall I
ever forget those lessons! They were presided over nominally by my
mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always
present, and found them a favourable occasion for giving my mother
lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the bane of both our
lives. I believe I was kept at home for that purpose. I had been
apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had
lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet
at her knee. To this day, when I look upon the fat black letters in
the primer, the puzzling novelty of their shapes, and the easy
good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present themselves again
before me as they used to do. But they recall no feeling of disgust
or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked along a path
of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been cheered
by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the way. But
these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the
death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery.
They were very long, very numerous, very hard - perfectly
unintelligible, some of them, to me - and I was generally as much
bewildered by them as I believe my poor mother was herself.

Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back
again.

I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my
books, and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me
at her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his
easy-chair by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book),
or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads.
The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I
begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into
my head, all sliding away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder
where they do go, by the by?

I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar,
perhaps a history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the
page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing
pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone
looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I
redden, tumble over half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother
would show me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, and she
says softly:

I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more,
but am not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I
tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was
all right before, and stop to think. But I can’t think about the
lesson. I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s
cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such
ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don’t want to
have anything at all to do with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of
impatience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss
Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively at them,
shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be worked out when
my other tasks are done.

There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a
rolling snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The
case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog
of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon
myself to my fate. The despairing way in which my mother and I look
at each other, as I blunder on, is truly melancholy. But the
greatest effect in these miserable lessons is when my mother
(thinking nobody is observing her) tries to give me the cue by the
motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been
lying in wait for nothing else all along, says in a deep warning
voice:

‘Clara!’

My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone
comes out of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my
ears with it, and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.

Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in
the shape of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and
delivered to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, ‘If I go into
a cheesemonger’s shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester
cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment’ - at which I
see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed. I pore over these cheeses
without any result or enlightenment until dinner-time, when, having
made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt of the slate into the
pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help me out with the
cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of the
evening.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate
studies generally took this course. I could have done very well if
I had been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the
Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a
wretched young bird. Even when I did get through the morning with
tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss
Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly
made any show of being unemployed, called her brother’s attention
to me by saying, ‘Clara, my dear, there’s nothing like work - give
your boy an exercise’; which caused me to be clapped down to some
new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other
children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy
theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of
little vipers (though there was a child once set in the midst of
the Disciples), and held that they contaminated one another.

The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for
some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I
was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more
shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been
almost stupefied but for one circumstance.

It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a
little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my
own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that
blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey
Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas,
and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company.
They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that
place and time, - they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of
the Genii, - and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of
them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing
to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and
blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It
is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my
small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating
my favourite characters in them - as I did - and by putting Mr. and
Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones - which I did too. I have been
Tom Jones (a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week
together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a
month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a
few volumes of Voyages and Travels - I forget what, now - that were
on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone
about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an
old set of boot-trees - the perfect realization of Captain
Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by
savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The
Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the
Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in
despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead
or alive.

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it,
the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys
at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if
for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the
church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of
its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some
locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up
the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his
back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know
that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the
parlour of our little village alehouse.

The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was when I
came to that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming
again.

One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found
my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr.
Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane - a lithe
and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and
poised and switched in the air.

‘I tell you, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘I have been often
flogged myself.’

To this my mother returned, ‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ and said
no more.

I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this
dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.

‘Now, David,’ he said - and I saw that cast again as he said it
- ‘you must be far more careful today than usual.’ He gave the cane
another poise, and another switch; and having finished his
preparation of it, laid it down beside him, with an impressive
look, and took up his book.

This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a
beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by
one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold
of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put
skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness there was no
checking.

We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in with an idea of
distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well
prepared; but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book
was added to the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly
watchful of us all the time. And when we came at last to the five
thousand cheeses (canes he made it that day, I remember), my mother
burst out crying.

‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.

‘I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,’ said my
mother.

I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said,
taking up the cane:

‘Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect
firmness, the worry and torment that David has occasioned her
today. That would be stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and
improved, but we can hardly expect so much from her. David, you and
I will go upstairs, boy.’

As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss
Murdstone said, ‘Clara! are you a perfect fool?’ and interfered. I
saw my mother stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.

He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely - I am certain he
had a delight in that formal parade of executing justice - and when
we got there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm.

‘Mr. Murdstone! Sir!’ I cried to him. ‘Don’t! Pray don’t beat
me! I have tried to learn, sir, but I can’t learn while you and
Miss Murdstone are by. I can’t indeed!’

‘Can’t you, indeed, David?’ he said. ‘We’ll try that.’

He had my head as in a vice, but I twined round him somehow, and
stopped him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was
only a moment that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant
afterwards, and in the same instant I caught the hand with which he
held me in my mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through. It sets
my teeth on edge to think of it.

He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above
all the noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and
crying out - I heard my mother crying out - and Peggotty. Then he
was gone; and the door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered
and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the
floor.

How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural
stillness seemed to reign through the whole house! How well I
remember, when my smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I
began to feel!

I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound. I
crawled up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so
swollen, red, and ugly that it almost frightened me. My stripes
were sore and stiff, and made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they
were nothing to the guilt I felt. It lay heavier on my breast than
if I had been a most atrocious criminal, I dare say.

It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been
lying, for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns
crying, dozing, and looking listlessly out), when the key was
turned, and Miss Murdstone came in with some bread and meat, and
milk. These she put down upon the table without a word, glaring at
me the while with exemplary firmness, and then retired, locking the
door after her.

Long after it was dark I sat there, wondering whether anybody
else would come. When this appeared improbable for that night, I
undressed, and went to bed; and, there, I began to wonder fearfully
what would be done to me. Whether it was a criminal act that I had
committed? Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to
prison? Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged?

I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being
cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed
down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance. Miss
Murdstone reappeared before I was out of bed; told me, in so many
words, that I was free to walk in the garden for half an hour and
no longer; and retired, leaving the door open, that I might avail
myself of that permission.

I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which
lasted five days. If I could have seen my mother alone, I should
have gone down on my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but
I saw no one, Miss Murdstone excepted, during the whole time -
except at evening prayers in the parlour; to which I was escorted
by Miss Murdstone after everybody else was placed; where I was
stationed, a young outlaw, all alone by myself near the door; and
whence I was solemnly conducted by my jailer, before any one arose
from the devotional posture. I only observed that my mother was as
far off from me as she could be, and kept her face another way so
that I never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone’s hand was bound up in
a large linen wrapper.

The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any
one. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance. The way in
which I listened to all the incidents of the house that made
themselves audible to me; the ringing of bells, the opening and
shutting of doors, the murmuring of voices, the footsteps on the
stairs; to any laughing, whistling, or singing, outside, which
seemed more dismal than anything else to me in my solitude and
disgrace - the uncertain pace of the hours, especially at night,
when I would wake thinking it was morning, and find that the family
were not yet gone to bed, and that all the length of night had yet
to come - the depressed dreams and nightmares I had - the return of
day, noon, afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the
churchyard, and I watched them from a distance within the room,
being ashamed to show myself at the window lest they should know I
was a prisoner - the strange sensation of never hearing myself
speak - the fleeting intervals of something like cheerfulness,
which came with eating and drinking, and went away with it - the
setting in of rain one evening, with a fresh smell, and its coming
down faster and faster between me and the church, until it and
gathering night seemed to quench me in gloom, and fear, and remorse
- all this appears to have gone round and round for years instead
of days, it is so vividly and strongly stamped on my remembrance.
On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own
name spoken in a whisper. I started up in bed, and putting out my
arms in the dark, said:

‘Is that you, Peggotty?’

There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name
again, in a tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I
should have gone into a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it
must have come through the keyhole.

I groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips to the
keyhole, whispered: ‘Is that you, Peggotty dear?’

‘Yes, my own precious Davy,’ she replied. ‘Be as soft as a
mouse, or the Cat’ll hear us.’

I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sensible of
the urgency of the case; her room being close by.

‘How’s mama, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with me?’

I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole,
as I was doing on mine, before she answered. ‘No. Not very.’

‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you
know?’

‘School. Near London,’ was Peggotty’s answer. I was obliged to
get her to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my
throat, in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away
from the keyhole and put my ear there; and though her words tickled
me a good deal, I didn’t hear them.

‘When, Peggotty?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of
my drawers?’ which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention
it.

‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Box.’

‘Shan’t I see mama?’

‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Morning.’

Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and
delivered these words through it with as much feeling and
earnestness as a keyhole has ever been the medium of communicating,
I will venture to assert: shooting in each broken little sentence
in a convulsive little burst of its own.

‘Davy, dear. If I ain’t been azackly as intimate with you.
Lately, as I used to be. It ain’t because I don’t love you. Just as
well and more, my pretty poppet. It’s because I thought it better
for you. And for someone else besides. Davy, my darling, are you
listening? Can you hear?’

‘Ye-ye-ye-yes, Peggotty!’ I sobbed.

‘My own!’ said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. ‘What I want
to say, is. That you must never forget me. For I’ll never forget
you. And I’ll take as much care of your mama, Davy. As ever I took
of you. And I won’t leave her. The day may come when she’ll be glad
to lay her poor head. On her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s arm
again. And I’ll write to you, my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar.
And I’ll - I’ll -’ Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole, as she
couldn’t kiss me.

‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’ said I. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you!
Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell
Mr. Peggotty and little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am
not so bad as they might suppose, and that I sent ’em all my love -
especially to little Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?’

The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole
with the greatest affection - I patted it with my hand, I
recollect, as if it had been her honest face - and parted. From
that night there grew up in my breast a feeling for Peggotty which
I cannot very well define. She did not replace my mother; no one
could do that; but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which
closed upon her, and I felt towards her something I have never felt
for any other human being. It was a sort of comical affection, too;
and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should have done, or
how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been to
me.

In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I
was going to school; which was not altogether such news to me as
she supposed. She also informed me that when I was dressed, I was
to come downstairs into the parlour, and have my breakfast. There,
I found my mother, very pale and with red eyes: into whose arms I
ran, and begged her pardon from my suffering soul.

‘Oh, Davy!’ she said. ‘That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to
be better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved,
Davy, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.’

They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was
more sorry for that than for my going away. I felt it sorely. I
tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my
bread- and-butter, and trickled into my tea. I saw my mother look
at me sometimes, and then glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone,
and than look down, or look away.

‘Master Copperfield’s box there!’ said Miss Murdstone, when
wheels were heard at the gate.

I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr.
Murdstone appeared. My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at the
door. The box was taken out to his cart, and lifted in.

‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note.

‘Ready, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother. ‘Good-bye, Davy. You
are going for your own good. Good-bye, my child. You will come home
in the holidays, and be a better boy.’

Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and
to say on the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a
bad end; and then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked
off with it.

Chapter5 I
Am Sent Away

We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief
was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short. Looking out
to ascertain for what, I saw, to my amazement, Peggotty burst from
a hedge and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and
squeezed me to her stays until the pressure on my nose was
extremely painful, though I never thought of that till afterwards
when I found it very tender. Not a single word did Peggotty speak.
Releasing one of her arms, she put it down in her pocket to the
elbow, and brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed
into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, but not
one word did she say. After another and a final squeeze with both
arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief is,
and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown. I
picked up one, of several that were rolling about, and treasured it
as a keepsake for a long time.

The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming
back. I shook my head, and said I thought not. ‘Then come up,’ said
the carrier to the lazy horse; who came up accordingly.

Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began
to think it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither
Roderick Random, nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy, had
ever cried, that I could remember, in trying situations. The
carrier, seeing me in this resolution, proposed that my pocket-
handkerchief should be spread upon the horse’s back to dry. I
thanked him, and assented; and particularly small it looked, under
those circumstances.

I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather
purse, with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which
Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater
delight. But its most precious contents were two half-crowns folded
together in a bit of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s
hand, ‘For Davy. With my love.’ I was so overcome by this, that I
asked the carrier to be so good as to reach me my
pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I had better do
without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes on my
sleeve and stopped myself.

For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I
was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had
jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going
all the way.

‘All the way where?’ inquired the carrier.

‘There,’ I said.

‘Where’s there?’ inquired the carrier.

‘Near London,’ I said.

‘Why that horse,’ said the carrier, jerking the rein to point
him out, ‘would be deader than pork afore he got over half the
ground.’

‘Are you only going to Yarmouth then?’ I asked.

‘That’s about it,’ said the carrier. ‘And there I shall take you
to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take you to -
wherever it is.’

As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr.
Barkis) to say - he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a
phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational - I offered
him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp,
exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his
big face than it would have done on an elephant’s.

‘Did she make ’em, now?’ said Mr. Barkis, always leaning
forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an
arm on each knee.

‘Peggotty, do you mean, sir?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Her.’

‘Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.’

‘Do she though?’ said Mr. Barkis. He made up his mouth as if to
whistle, but he didn’t whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears,
as if he saw something new there; and sat so, for a considerable
time. By and by, he said:

‘No sweethearts, I b’lieve?’

‘Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?’ For I thought he wanted
something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that
description of refreshment.

‘Hearts,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Sweet hearts; no person walks with
her!’

‘With Peggotty?’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Her.’

‘Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.’

‘Didn’t she, though!’ said Mr. Barkis.

Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn’t
whistle, but sat looking at the horse’s ears.

‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of
reflection, ‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do
she?’

I replied that such was the fact.

‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might
be writin’ to her?’

‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.

‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you
was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was
willin’; would you?’

‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all
the message?’

‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’

‘But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,’ I
said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it
then, and could give your own message so much better.’

As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his
head, and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with
profound gravity, ‘Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,’ I
readily undertook its transmission. While I was waiting for the
coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a
sheet of paper and an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which
ran thus: ‘My dear Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is
willing. My love to mama. Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he
particularly wants you to know - Barkis is willing.’

When I had taken this commission on myself prospectively, Mr.
Barkis relapsed into perfect silence; and I, feeling quite worn out
by all that had happened lately, lay down on a sack in the cart and
fell asleep. I slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth; which was so
entirely new and strange to me in the inn-yard to which we drove,
that I at once abandoned a latent hope I had had of meeting with
some of Mr. Peggotty’s family there, perhaps even with little Em’ly
herself.

The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, but
without any horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if
nothing was more unlikely than its ever going to London. I was
thinking this, and wondering what would ultimately become of my
box, which Mr. Barkis had put down on the yard-pavement by the pole
(he having driven up the yard to turn his cart), and also what
would ultimately become of me, when a lady looked out of a
bow-window where some fowls and joints of meat were hanging up, and
said:

‘Is that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.

‘What name?’ inquired the lady.

‘Copperfield, ma’am,’ I said.

‘That won’t do,’ returned the lady. ‘Nobody’s dinner is paid for
here, in that name.’

‘Is it Murdstone, ma’am?’ I said.

‘If you’re Master Murdstone,’ said the lady, ‘why do you go and
give another name, first?’

I explained to the lady how it was, who than rang a bell, and
called out, ‘William! show the coffee-room!’ upon which a waiter
came running out of a kitchen on the opposite side of the yard to
show it, and seemed a good deal surprised when he was only to show
it to me.

It was a large long room with some large maps in it. I doubt if
I could have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign
countries, and I cast away in the middle of them. I felt it was
taking a liberty to sit down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner
of the chair nearest the door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on
purpose for me, and put a set of castors on it, I think I must have
turned red all over with modesty.

He brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers
off in such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given
him some offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a
chair for me at the table, and saying, very affably, ‘Now,
six-foot! come on!’

I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it
extremely difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like
dexterity, or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he
was standing opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the
most dreadful manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me
into the second chop, he said:

‘There’s half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it now?’

I thanked him and said, ‘Yes.’ Upon which he poured it out of a
jug into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and
made it look beautiful.

‘My eye!’ he said. ‘It seems a good deal, don’t it?’

‘It does seem a good deal,’ I answered with a smile. For it was
quite delightful to me, to find him so pleasant. He was a
twinkling-eyed, pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright
all over his head; and as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up
the glass to the light with the other hand, he looked quite
friendly.

‘There was a gentleman here, yesterday,’ he said - ‘a stout
gentleman, by the name of Topsawyer - perhaps you know him?’

‘He came in here,’ said the waiter, looking at the light through
the tumbler, ‘ordered a glass of this ale - would order it - I told
him not - drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It
oughtn’t to be drawn; that’s the fact.’

I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and
said I thought I had better have some water.

‘Why you see,’ said the waiter, still looking at the light
through the tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, ‘our people
don’t like things being ordered and left. It offends ’em. But I’ll
drink it, if you like. I’m used to it, and use is everything. I
don’t think it’ll hurt me, if I throw my head back, and take it off
quick. Shall I?’

I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he
thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he
did throw his head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible
fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr.
Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him.
On the contrary, I thought he seemed the fresher for it.

‘What have we got here?’ he said, putting a fork into my dish.
‘Not chops?’

‘Chops,’ I said.

‘Lord bless my soul!’ he exclaimed, ‘I didn’t know they were
chops. Why, a chop’s the very thing to take off the bad effects of
that beer! Ain’t it lucky?’

So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the
other, and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme
satisfaction. He afterwards took another chop, and another potato;
and after that, another chop and another potato. When we had done,
he brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to
ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.

‘How’s the pie?’ he said, rousing himself.

‘It’s a pudding,’ I made answer.

‘Pudding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, bless me, so it is! What!’
looking at it nearer. ‘You don’t mean to say it’s a
batter-pudding!’

‘Yes, it is indeed.’

‘Why, a batter-pudding,’ he said, taking up a table-spoon, ‘is
my favourite pudding! Ain’t that lucky? Come on, little ‘un, and
let’s see who’ll get most.’

The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to
come in and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his
dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was
left far behind at the first mouthful, and had no chance with him.
I never saw anyone enjoy a pudding so much, I think; and he
laughed, when it was all gone, as if his enjoyment of it lasted
still.

Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that
I asked for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggotty. He not
only brought it immediately, but was good enough to look over me
while I wrote the letter. When I had finished it, he asked me where
I was going to school.

‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that’s the school where
they broke the boy’s ribs - two ribs - a little boy he was. I
should say he was - let me see - how old are you, about?’

I told him between eight and nine.

‘That’s just his age,’ he said. ‘He was eight years and six
months old when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight
months old when they broke his second, and did for him.’

I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this
was an uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done. His
answer was not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two
dismal words, ‘With whopping.’

The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable
diversion, which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the
mingled pride and diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of
my pocket), if there were anything to pay.

‘There’s a sheet of letter-paper,’ he returned. ‘Did you ever
buy a sheet of letter-paper?’

I could not remember that I ever had.

‘It’s dear,’ he said, ‘on account of the duty. Threepence.
That’s the way we’re taxed in this country. There’s nothing else,
except the waiter. Never mind the ink. I lose by that.’

‘What should you - what should I - how much ought I to - what
would it be right to pay the waiter, if you please?’ I stammered,
blushing.

‘If I hadn’t a family, and that family hadn’t the cowpock,’ said
the waiter, ‘I wouldn’t take a sixpence. If I didn’t support a aged
pairint, and a lovely sister,’ - here the waiter was greatly
agitated - ‘I wouldn’t take a farthing. If I had a good place, and
was treated well here, I should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead
of taking of it. But I live on broken wittles - and I sleep on the
coals’ - here the waiter burst into tears.

I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any
recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness
of heart. Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings,
which he received with much humility and veneration, and spun up
with his thumb, directly afterwards, to try the goodness of.

It was a little disconcerting to me, to find, when I was being
helped up behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all
the dinner without any assistance. I discovered this, from
overhearing the lady in the bow-window say to the guard, ‘Take care
of that child, George, or he’ll burst!’ and from observing that the
women-servants who were about the place came out to look and giggle
at me as a young phenomenon. My unfortunate friend the waiter, who
had quite recovered his spirits, did not appear to be disturbed by
this, but joined in the general admiration without being at all
confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose this half awakened
it; but I am inclined to believe that with the simple confidence of
a child, and the natural reliance of a child upon superior years
(qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change
for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole,
even then.

I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving
it, the subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the
coach drawing heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as
to the greater expediency of my travelling by waggon. The story of
my supposed appetite getting wind among the outside passengers,
they were merry upon it likewise; and asked me whether I was going
to be paid for, at school, as two brothers or three, and whether I
was contracted for, or went upon the regular terms; with other
pleasant questions. But the worst of it was, that I knew I should
be ashamed to eat anything, when an opportunity offered, and that,
after a rather light dinner, I should remain hungry all night - for
I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel, in my hurry. My
apprehensions were realized. When we stopped for supper I couldn’t
muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it very
much, but sat by the fire and said I didn’t want anything. This did
not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentleman
with a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly
all the way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said
I was like a boa-constrictor who took enough at one meal to last
him a long time; after which, he actually brought a rash out upon
himself with boiled beef.

We had started from Yarmouth at three o’clock in the afternoon,
and we were due in London about eight next morning. It was
Mid-summer weather, and the evening was very pleasant. When we
passed through a village, I pictured to myself what the insides of
the houses were like, and what the inhabitants were about; and when
boys came running after us, and got up behind and swung there for a
little way, I wondered whether their fathers were alive, and
whether they Were happy at home. I had plenty to think of,
therefore, besides my mind running continually on the kind of place
I was going to - which was an awful speculation. Sometimes, I
remember, I resigned myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; and
to endeavouring, in a confused blind way, to recall how I had felt,
and what sort of boy I used to be, before I bit Mr. Murdstone:
which I couldn’t satisfy myself about by any means, I seemed to
have bitten him in such a remote antiquity.

The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly;
and being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and
another) to prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly
smothered by their falling asleep, and completely blocking me up.
They squeezed me so hard sometimes, that I could not help crying
out, ‘Oh! If you please!’ - which they didn’t like at all, because
it woke them. Opposite me was an elderly lady in a great fur cloak,
who looked in the dark more like a haystack than a lady, she was
wrapped up to such a degree. This lady had a basket with her, and
she hadn’t known what to do with it, for a long time, until she
found that on account of my legs being short, it could go
underneath me. It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me perfectly
miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass that was
in the basket rattle against something else (as it was sure to do),
she gave me the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, ‘Come,
don’t you fidget. Your bones are young enough, I’m sure!’

At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to sleep
easier. The difficulties under which they had laboured all night,
and which had found utterance in the most terrific gasps and
snorts, are not to be conceived. As the sun got higher, their sleep
became lighter, and so they gradually one by one awoke. I recollect
being very much surprised by the feint everybody made, then, of not
having been to sleep at all, and by the uncommon indignation with
which everyone repelled the charge. I labour under the same kind of
astonishment to this day, having invariably observed that of all
human weaknesses, the one to which our common nature is the least
disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is the weakness of
having gone to sleep in a coach.

What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the
distance, and how I believed all the adventures of all my favourite
heroes to be constantly enacting and re-enacting there, and how I
vaguely made it out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and
wickedness than all the cities of the earth, I need not stop here
to relate. We approached it by degrees, and got, in due time, to
the inn in the Whitechapel district, for which we were bound. I
forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the Blue Boar; but I know
it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted up on
the back of the coach.

The guard’s eye lighted on me as he was getting down, and he
said at the booking-office door:

‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the name of
Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left till called
for?’

‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the name of
Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but owning to the name of
Copperfield, to be left till called for?’ said the guard. ‘Come! Is
there anybody?’

No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously around; but the inquiry
made no impression on any of the bystanders, if I except a man in
gaiters, with one eye, who suggested that they had better put a
brass collar round my neck, and tie me up in the stable.

A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady, who was
like a haystack: not daring to stir, until her basket was removed.
The coach was clear of passengers by that time, the luggage was
very soon cleared out, the horses had been taken out before the
luggage, and now the coach itself was wheeled and backed off by
some hostlers, out of the way. Still, nobody appeared, to claim the
dusty youngster from Blunderstone, Suffolk.

More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at
him and see that he was solitary, I went into the booking-office,
and, by invitation of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter,
and sat down on the scale at which they weighed the luggage. Here,
as I sat looking at the parcels, packages, and books, and inhaling
the smell of stables (ever since associated with that morning), a
procession of most tremendous considerations began to march through
my mind. Supposing nobody should ever fetch me, how long would they
consent to keep me there? Would they keep me long enough to spend
seven shillings? Should I sleep at night in one of those wooden
bins, with the other luggage, and wash myself at the pump in the
yard in the morning; or should I be turned out every night, and
expected to come again to be left till called for, when the office
opened next day? Supposing there was no mistake in the case, and
Mr. Murdstone had devised this plan to get rid of me, what should I
do? If they allowed me to remain there until my seven shillings
were spent, I couldn’t hope to remain there when I began to starve.
That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the
customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk
of funeral expenses. If I started off at once, and tried to walk
back home, how could I ever find my way, how could I ever hope to
walk so far, how could I make sure of anyone but Peggotty, even if
I got back? If I found out the nearest proper authorities, and
offered myself to go for a soldier, or a sailor, I was such a
little fellow that it was most likely they wouldn’t take me in.
These thoughts, and a hundred other such thoughts, turned me
burning hot, and made me giddy with apprehension and dismay. I was
in the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered to the
clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over
to him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for.

As I went out of the office, hand in hand with this new
acquaintance, I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sallow young
man, with hollow cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr.
Murdstone’s; but there the likeness ended, for his whiskers were
shaved off, and his hair, instead of being glossy, was rusty and
dry. He was dressed in a suit of black clothes which were rather
rusty and dry too, and rather short in the sleeves and legs; and he
had a white neck-kerchief on, that was not over-clean. I did not,
and do not, suppose that this neck-kerchief was all the linen he
wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.

‘You’re the new boy?’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

I supposed I was. I didn’t know.

‘I’m one of the masters at Salem House,’ he said.

I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. I was so ashamed
to allude to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a
master at Salem House, that we had gone some little distance from
the yard before I had the hardihood to mention it. We turned back,
on my humbly insinuating that it might be useful to me hereafter;
and he told the clerk that the carrier had instructions to call for
it at noon.

‘If you please, sir,’ I said, when we had accomplished about the
same distance as before, ‘is it far?’

‘It’s down by Blackheath,’ he said.

‘Is that far, sir?’ I diffidently asked.

‘It’s a good step,’ he said. ‘We shall go by the stage-coach.
It’s about six miles.’

I was so faint and tired, that the idea of holding out for six
miles more, was too much for me. I took heart to tell him that I
had had nothing all night, and that if he would allow me to buy
something to eat, I should be very much obliged to him. He appeared
surprised at this - I see him stop and look at me now - and after
considering for a few moments, said he wanted to call on an old
person who lived not far off, and that the best way would be for me
to buy some bread, or whatever I liked best that was wholesome, and
make my breakfast at her house, where we could get some milk.

Accordingly we looked in at a baker’s window, and after I had
made a series of proposals to buy everything that was bilious in
the shop, and he had rejected them one by one, we decided in favour
of a nice little loaf of brown bread, which cost me threepence.
Then, at a grocer’s shop, we bought an egg and a slice of streaky
bacon; which still left what I thought a good deal of change, out
of the second of the bright shillings, and made me consider London
a very cheap place. These provisions laid in, we went on through a
great noise and uproar that confused my weary head beyond
description, and over a bridge which, no doubt, was London Bridge
(indeed I think he told me so, but I was half asleep), until we
came to the poor person’s house, which was a part of some
alms-houses, as I knew by their look, and by an inscription on a
stone over the gate which said they were established for
twenty-five poor women.

The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of one of a number of
little black doors that were all alike, and had each a little
diamond-paned window on one side, and another little diamond- paned
window above; and we went into the little house of one of these
poor old women, who was blowing a fire to make a little saucepan
boil. On seeing the master enter, the old woman stopped with the
bellows on her knee, and said something that I thought sounded like
‘My Charley!’ but on seeing me come in too, she got up, and rubbing
her hands made a confused sort of half curtsey.

‘Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast for him, if you
please?’ said the Master at Salem House.

‘Can I?’ said the old woman. ‘Yes can I, sure!’

‘How’s Mrs. Fibbitson today?’ said the Master, looking at
another old woman in a large chair by the fire, who was such a
bundle of clothes that I feel grateful to this hour for not having
sat upon her by mistake.

‘Ah, she’s poorly,’ said the first old woman. ‘It’s one of her
bad days. If the fire was to go out, through any accident, I verily
believe she’d go out too, and never come to life again.’

As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Although it was a
warm day, she seemed to think of nothing but the fire. I fancied
she was jealous even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to
know that she took its impressment into the service of boiling my
egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own
discomfited eyes, shake her fist at me once, when those culinary
operations were going on, and no one else was looking. The sun
streamed in at the little window, but she sat with her own back and
the back of the large chair towards it, screening the fire as if
she were sedulously keeping it warm, instead of it keeping her
warm, and watching it in a most distrustful manner. The completion
of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the fire, gave
her such extreme joy that she laughed aloud - and a very
unmelodious laugh she had, I must say.

I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of bacon,
with a basin of milk besides, and made a most delicious meal. While
I was yet in the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house
said to the Master:

‘Have you got your flute with you?’

‘Yes,’ he returned.

‘Have a blow at it,’ said the old woman, coaxingly. ‘Do!’

The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his
coat, and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed
together, and began immediately to play. My impression is, after
many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody
in the world who played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I
have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial. I
don’t know what the tunes were - if there were such things in the
performance at all, which I doubt - but the influence of the strain
upon me was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I
could hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite; and
lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the recollection
rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room, with its open
corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular
little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock’s
feathers displayed over the mantelpiece - I remember wondering when
I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had
known what his finery was doomed to come to - fades from before me,
and I nod, and sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of
the coach are heard instead, and I am on my journey. The coach
jolts, I wake with a start, and the flute has come back again, and
the Master at Salem House is sitting with his legs crossed, playing
it dolefully, while the old woman of the house looks on delighted.
She fades in her turn, and he fades, and all fades, and there is no
flute, no Master, no Salem House, no David Copperfield, no anything
but heavy sleep.

I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this
dismal flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone nearer and
nearer to him in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of
his chair and gave him an affectionate squeeze round the neck,
which stopped his playing for a moment. I was in the middle state
between sleeping and waking, either then or immediately afterwards;
for, as he resumed - it was a real fact that he had stopped playing
- I saw and heard the same old woman ask Mrs. Fibbitson if it
wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs. Fibbitson
replied, ‘Ay, ay! yes!’ and nodded at the fire: to which, I am
persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole performance.

When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Master at
Salem House unscrewed his flute into the three pieces, put them up
as before, and took me away. We found the coach very near at hand,
and got upon the roof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we
stopped on the road to take up somebody else, they put me inside
where there were no passengers, and where I slept profoundly, until
I found the coach going at a footpace up a steep hill among green
leaves. Presently, it stopped, and had come to its destination.

A short walk brought us - I mean the Master and me - to Salem
House, which was enclosed with a high brick wall, and looked very
dull. Over a door in this wall was a board with Salem HousE upon
it; and through a grating in this door we were surveyed when we
rang the bell by a surly face, which I found, on the door being
opened, belonged to a stout man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg,
overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all round his head.

‘The new boy,’ said the Master.

The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over - it didn’t take
long, for there was not much of me - and locked the gate behind us,
and took out the key. We were going up to the house, among some
dark heavy trees, when he called after my conductor. ‘Hallo!’

We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little
lodge, where he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand.

‘Here! The cobbler’s been,’ he said, ‘since you’ve been out, Mr.
Mell, and he says he can’t mend ’em any more. He says there ain’t a
bit of the original boot left, and he wonders you expect it.’

With these words he threw the boots towards Mr. Mell, who went
back a few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very
disconsolately, I was afraid), as we went on together. I observed
then, for the first time, that the boots he had on were a good deal
the worse for wear, and that his stocking was just breaking out in
one place, like a bud.

Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare
and unfurnished appearance. All about it was so very quiet, that I
said to Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out; but he seemed
surprised at my not knowing that it was holiday-time. That all the
boys were at their several homes. That Mr. Creakle, the proprietor,
was down by the sea-side with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was
sent in holiday-time as a punishment for my misdoing, all of which
he explained to me as we went along.

I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most
forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. A long
room with three long rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling
all round with pegs for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books
and exercises litter the dirty floor. Some silkworms’ houses, made
of the same materials, are scattered over the desks. Two miserable
little white mice, left behind by their owner, are running up and
down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and wire, looking in all
the corners with their red eyes for anything to eat. A bird, in a
cage very little bigger than himself, makes a mournful rattle now
and then in hopping on his perch, two inches high, or dropping from
it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a strange unwholesome
smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting
air, and rotten books. There could not well be more ink splashed
about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and
the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the
varying seasons of the year.

Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots
upstairs, I went softly to the upper end of the room, observing all
this as I crept along. Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard placard,
beautifully written, which was lying on the desk, and bore these
words: ‘Take care of him He bites.’

I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least a
great dog underneath. But, though I looked all round with anxious
eyes, I could see nothing of him. I was still engaged in peering
about, when Mr. Mell came back, and asked me what I did up
there?

‘No, Copperfield,’ says he, gravely, ‘that’s not a dog. That’s a
boy. My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your
back. I am sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do
it.’ With that he took me down, and tied the placard, which was
neatly constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like a
knapsack; and wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consolation of
carrying it.

What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. Whether
it was possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that
somebody was reading it. It was no relief to turn round and find
nobody; for wherever my back was, there I imagined somebody always
to be. That cruel man with the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings.
He was in authority; and if he ever saw me leaning against a tree,
or a wall, or the house, he roared out from his lodge door in a
stupendous voice, ‘Hallo, you sir! You Copperfield! Show that badge
conspicuous, or I’ll report you!’ The playground was a bare
gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house and the offices;
and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher read it, and
the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came backwards
and forwards to the house, of a morning when I was ordered to walk
there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit, I recollect
that I positively began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of
wild boy who did bite.

There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had
a custom of carving their names. It was completely covered with
such inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the vacation and their
coming back, I could not read a boy’s name, without inquiring in
what tone and with what emphasis he would read, ‘Take care of him.
He bites.’ There was one boy - a certain J. Steerforth - who cut
his name very deep and very often, who, I conceived, would read it
in a rather strong voice, and afterwards pull my hair. There was
another boy, one Tommy Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of
it, and pretend to be dreadfully frightened of me. There was a
third, George Demple, who I fancied would sing it. I have looked, a
little shrinking creature, at that door, until the owners of all
the names - there were five-and-forty of them in the school then,
Mr. Mell said - seemed to send me to Coventry by general
acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, ‘Take care of
him. He bites!’

It was the same with the places at the desks and forms. It was
the same with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped at, on my
way to, and when I was in, my own bed. I remember dreaming night
after night, of being with my mother as she used to be, or of going
to a party at Mr. Peggotty’s, or of travelling outside the
stage-coach, or of dining again with my unfortunate friend the
waiter, and in all these circumstances making people scream and
stare, by the unhappy disclosure that I had nothing on but my
little night-shirt, and that placard.

In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of
the re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable
affliction! I had long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I
did them, there being no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and got
through them without disgrace. Before, and after them, I walked
about - supervised, as I have mentioned, by the man with the wooden
leg. How vividly I call to mind the damp about the house, the green
cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky water-butt, and the
discoloured trunks of some of the grim trees, which seemed to have
dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to have blown less
in the sun! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end of a
long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, and smelling of fat.
Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a
blue teacup, and I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven
or eight in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the
schoolroom, worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-
paper, making out the bills (as I found) for last half-year. When
he had put up his things for the night he took out his flute, and
blew at it, until I almost thought he would gradually blow his
whole being into the large hole at the top, and ooze away at the
keys.

I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting with
my head upon my hand, listening to the doleful performance of Mr.
Mell, and conning tomorrow’s lessons. I picture myself with my
books shut up, still listening to the doleful performance of Mr.
Mell, and listening through it to what used to be at home, and to
the blowing of the wind on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and
solitary. I picture myself going up to bed, among the unused rooms,
and sitting on my bed-side crying for a comfortable word from
Peggotty. I picture myself coming downstairs in the morning, and
looking through a long ghastly gash of a staircase window at the
school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house with a weathercock
above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J. Steerforth
and the rest to work: which is only second, in my foreboding
apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg shall
unlock the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I
cannot think I was a very dangerous character in any of these
aspects, but in all of them I carried the same warning on my
back.

Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me. I
suppose we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to
mention that he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and
clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an
unaccountable manner. But he had these peculiarities: and at first
they frightened me, though I soon got used to them.